Thida Thavornseth, Former UDD chairwoman, Chairwoman of UDD advisory board
June 17th 2019
(Adapted from Facebook Live)
Although the NCPO government seems to be secure, the stability of the government depends on the stability of the parliament. The pro-junta bloc has a very slim majority in the House of Representatives, while the selection process of the senators is questionable. The latter is due to the fact that some members of the selection committee appear later in the senate along with some of their family members, raising the suspicion of the conflict of interest and nepotism.
After seeing these points, I would like to question that “Does the status of the MPs and senators of the 2019 national assembly contradict to the 2017 constitution?”
If it does, the stability of the national assembly is precarious. Could it be possible for the NCPO to intervene and then absolve the pro-junta MPs and senators from the constitution court? And how would Thai people and the international community view Thai national assembly if that happened?
For the concerns on the MP’s side, scholars from Mahidol university Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies (IHRC) and iLaw advocacy group had discussed whether the election was legitimate and transparent or not. Still, it is my duty as an election observer to check the election and its result that is it fair. I can see now that it was clearly wrong.
We should remember that the slim majority in the House of Representatives gives the pro-junta bloc the opportunity to set up the government, but if the vote is recalculated truly according to the constitution, the result will be differ. The pro-democracy bloc should get 250+ MPs, while the pro-junta bloc gets only 240+ MPs. So, the legitimacy of the pro-junta bloc to set up the government should be put in questioned. Even though scholars from IHRC, iLaw and the mathematical field have spoken on this issue, it fell on deaf ears. Thus, I will speak about this issue again.
The three mistakes of the MP seat calculation are :
1) It disregards the mathematical principles regarding the
integral and the fractional part of the number.
2) It disregards the 2017 constitution, especially section
91, which state that in the clause (4) that “the total number of Members of the House of Representatives on a party list
basis shall be allocated proportionally among political parties having a number
of Members of the House of Representatives on a constituency basis that is
lower than the number of Members of the House of Representatives distributed to
that political party under clause (2) [The quotient calculated from the number
of votes received throughout the country by each political party from all
constituencies in the election divided by the ratio between the total number of
votes received throughout the country by all political parties sending
candidates for election on party list basis from the election on a constituency
and the total number of Members of the House of Representatives]
”
3) It disregards the clause (4) in article 128 of the 2018
election act, which state that the Party-list MP seats shall be firstly assigned
according to the integral part of the calculated result [from clause (2),
section 91 of the 2017 constitution and clause (3), article 128 of the 2018
election act].
Anyone, after reading the constitution and the election
act, would calculate the MP seats differently from the current Election
Commission of Thailand (ETC). Why did the ECT calculate the MP seats
differently from everybody else, while contradicting the constitution as well?
And why ECT seems so confidence in its own calculation?
The first mistake is the calculation of “eligible MPs”
from each party. Under clause (1) and (2) of the 2017 constitution, “eligible
MPs” for each party are calculated by dividing the number of votes received throughout the country by each
political party from all constituencies in the election on a constituency basis
with the “vote number required for each MP” (calculated by the total number of
votes received throughout the country by all political parties divided by the
number of MPs). For this election, the total vote count of 35,561,556 is
divided by the total number of MPs of 500, so the “vote number required for
each MP” was 71,123.112 votes per MP seat as shown in Figure 1.
When ECT gave the parties with 30,000 to 40,000 vote count for MP seats, it
was clearly wrong because their vote counts were less than the vote number
required for each MP. Moreover, there were mistakes in calculating Pheu Thai Party’s
MP seats that affected the other parties’ MP seat calculation. This is the
crucial point.
Total vote count of the Pheu Thai Party in this election was 7,881,006. When dividing with “vote number required for each MP”, the “eligible MP seat” of Pheu Thai should be 110.8079. But since the Pheu Thai Party won in 136 constituencies, the constitution automatically grants the party with 136 MP seats. Therefore, in the overall party list MP seat calculation, the number of the party list MP from Pheu Thai should be 110.8079 – 136 = -25.1921, not 0 as in the ECT calculation shown in Figure 2.
From this point,
the ECT summed up the eligible party list MP seats of all parties in the
election and got the result of 175.1921 because the ECT use the eligible party
list MP seats of Pheu Thai party as 0, not as -25.1921 as it should be. If the ECT
uses the number of -25.1921 in the calculation, it will be exactly 175.1921 –
25.1921 = 150. Since vote number required for each MP was 71,123.112, and Pheu
Thai got 136 MP seats, the party must theoretically receive 9,762,743 votes
during the election if the number of eligible party list MP for the party is to
be 0, as shown in Figure 3.
The additional
“25 seat” make the number of the eligible party list MP more than the number stated
in the 2017 constitution, and gave the ECT a “chance” to “divide” the party
list MP seats, by multiplying the “eligible party list MP seat” of each party
with the ratio of 150/175 = 0.85714286. This had reduced the initial number of
party list MP from every party, especially from the larger parties like Future
Forward Party, which lost 7 MPs.
The second mistake is the “rounding up the MP number from micro-parties”. Because of multiplying the eligible party list MP seats with the ratio between 150/175, the initial number of party list MP was reduced to 128.57, leaving around 21 seats vacated. Instead of adjusting the multiplier to reflect the true proportion of the popular vote, the ECT chooses to fill these vacated seats by rounding up the party list MP number from micro-parties which had eligible MP seats less than 1 from the calculation and gave each micro-party one seat. This is contrary to section 91 of the 2017 constitution which state that the party list MP seats assigned to that party must not exceed the calculated eligible party list MP number. It is also contrary to article 128 of the 2018 election act which is identical to the respective content of the constitution. Furthermore, Clause (4), article 128 of the 2018 election act also state that that the Party-list MP seats must be firstly assigned according to the integral part of the calculated result.
The ECT must, therefore, be very reckless to violate the constitution, the election act, and the principle of arithmetic. What a great mistake!
I wonder that, since the selection process of MPs and senators violate the constitution, are the status of MPs and senators actually valid? And if the status of MPs and senators are invalid, would the status of the prime minister who was elected by these MPs and senators become invalid as well? And if the status of the PM, MPs and senators are invalid, is this current Thai government a legitimate government at all?